01 / FOUNDATION SKILLS

Building the Foundations

The opening weeks of the Designer Maker course are deliberately structured around a series of increasingly demanding exercises. Each introduces new techniques while reinforcing the accuracy, patience and tool control developed in the previous project.

The students have now successfully completed tool preparation and sharpening, octagonal breadboards, hand-shaping exercises, the Chinese Puzzle, dovetail practice and their dovetailed bookends.

These are relatively small projects, but there’s a great deal of learning packed into them. By the time students reach the bookends, they’re combining accurate marking out, dimensioning, sawing and careful chisel work to produce properly fitting joints.

Practice Makes Progress

Most students have made three or four dovetailed bookends, and the improvement from those first practice joints has been remarkable.

You can see just how clean and crisp the finished joints are becoming. It’s a good reminder that precision isn’t something you develop from a single successful attempt. It comes from repeating a process, recognising where things can be improved and gradually developing the confidence to work accurately and consistently.

Understanding the Material

There’s an important reason we spend time on exercises like these. Working directly with wood develops a much better understanding of the material itself: how it cuts, how the grain changes, which forms are practical and where a particular technique might be useful.

That understanding becomes increasingly valuable as students begin designing their own work.

Good furniture design isn’t just about imagining an interesting form. It’s about understanding how that form can actually be made.

The relationship between designing and making is central to our teaching. We believe the most interesting and successful solutions often come from a genuine understanding of process, developed through practical experience.

03 / EXPLORING SURFACE DETAIL

A Little Relief Carving

The second technical exercise introduced relief carving, giving the students another opportunity to explore shape, surface and decorative detail.

Working from paper templates, the students began transferring designs onto timber before using carving tools to remove material and develop the relief.

We have a collection of example blocks at the school to demonstrate different approaches, but there’s plenty of scope for students to experiment with their own ideas.

Making It Their Own

As you can see from the students’ practice pieces, the results have been wonderfully varied. There are different patterns, forms and approaches to the carving, including one rather brilliant carved handprint!

These exercises are also a useful introduction to thinking about how decorative details might be incorporated into a larger piece of furniture, something the students are now beginning to explore in their wall cabinets.

04 / THE FIRST FURNITURE PROJECT

On to the Wall Cabinet

With the foundation projects completed, the group has now moved on to one of our long-standing Designer Maker favourites: the Wall Hanging Cabinet.

This is a significant step up from the earlier exercises. For the first time, students are bringing together a much wider range of processes to make a complete piece of furniture, while also beginning to make decisions about its appearance.

Before getting started, the students visited our friends at Duffield Timber, where they selected their own boards for the project.

Choosing timber is an important part of the process. Students begin to consider grain, colour, figure and how the material might work across the different components of the cabinet.

A Lot of Learning in One Cabinet

The project combines machine preparation, mitred dovetails, Domino joints, a frame-and-panel door, hand-cut mortice and tenon joinery and a veneered back panel.

It’s a substantial technical challenge, but there’s also room for creative decisions. Students are encouraged to explore hand shaping around the shelving, along with their own ideas for the door panel.

That might involve relief carving, inlay or another decorative treatment, with the aim of introducing some individuality while remaining focused on the core making skills.

From Drawings to Components

The students are now working their way through the various cabinet components, preparing their timber, establishing accurate dimensions and tackling the joinery.

Mitred dovetails are among the more demanding details, combining the strength and accuracy of dovetail construction with a clean mitred appearance at the corner.

It’s a considerable progression from the bookends they were making only a short time ago, and exactly the sort of challenge those earlier exercises are designed to prepare them for.

Taking the Joinery Further

The cabinet’s mitred dovetailed corners are a particularly satisfying detail to see coming together.

They demand careful marking out and fitting, with very little room for error. The work builds directly on the hand-cut dovetails from the foundation projects, but introduces a new level of complexity.

Details Taking Shape

There’s plenty happening elsewhere on the cabinets too, from hand-shaped rounded profiles to mortise and tenon work for the doors, along with the careful business of gluing up the mitred corners.

These are still very much works in progress, but it’s already interesting to see the different approaches developing around the workshop.

After half-term, the students will continue bringing the various elements together, including their frame-and-panel doors, veneered backs and the hand-shaped details that will give each cabinet its own character.

05 / ELSEWHERE IN THE WORKSHOP

A Busy Week for Our Introduction Students Too

It’s not just the Designer Makers who’ve been busy. We’ve also had a new group joining us this week for our five-day Introduction to Fine Furniture Making course.

They’ve been working through some of the same essential foundation skills, beginning with tool preparation and sharpening before moving on to the octagonal breadboard and Chinese Puzzle.

It’s a great introduction to the accuracy and hand-tool techniques involved in fine furniture making, whether students are looking to develop a new interest or considering taking their skills further.